


...From Old Lovers to New

by Selenay



Series: Crossing the Line [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode Related, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-20
Updated: 2007-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-15 04:40:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/845426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selenay/pseuds/Selenay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The people of Atlantis have a chance to communicate with Earth, possibly their last chance, and Elizabeth finds that she isn't the only person in the city with difficult messages to send.</p>
            </blockquote>





	...From Old Lovers to New

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: Letters from Pegasus

The news that it might be possible to send messages to Earth circulated around Atlantis like wildfire. For most people, it seemed to bring a moment of hope: they would be able to tell their families all the things that they hadn't thought to tell them before they left Earth. For a few, it forced painful decisions that they had been putting off for months, safe in the knowledge that Earth was forever out of reach and they could start anew in Atlantis.

The three people standing in front of Elizabeth's desk were firmly in the latter category. Elizabeth sighed internally. Of all the things that could have happened, why did it have to be this?

The most senior of the three, Captain Walton, stood stiffly at attention. Lieutenant Cary also stood at attention, but without impression of having a poker shoved up her . . .

Elizabeth quickly rephrased the thought. The third member of the trio was a young, lanky Athosian man who kept shooting Walton angry glances but didn't look as though he'd heard of the concept of 'attention'.

"Are you sure about this?" Elizabeth asked, trying to get some idea of the story behind the strange request.

"Yes, ma'am," Cary said.

There was an awkward silence.

"Doctor Weir, in view of our current situation you are the highest authority we can put this request to," Walton said eventually.

"The highest civilian authority," Elizabeth reminded him. "Isn't this is a military matter?"

Walton looked uncomfortable. "The consequences of Lieutenant Cary's actions could be considered a military matter, Doctor Weir, but her request is not."

"You understand that I can't grant Lieutenant Cary a divorce," Elizabeth said. "My authority doesn't extend that far."

"I understand, ma'am," Cary said, her eyes fixed on the wall behind Elizabeth. "We just want to be together properly before our baby is born and the Athosian way . . ."

The young Athosian, Antho, shuffled slightly closer to Cary and said, "If Dana has informed her husband of her intent and they are no longer living together then under Athosian law we can be joined."

"Not under Earth law," Elizabeth reminded them.

Antho shrugged, unconcerned. "We will not be using an Earth ceremony. It will be an Athosian joining."

Elizabeth could feel a headache starting just above her left eye. "Lieutenant Cary, how long have you and your husband been separated?"

Cary finally looked at her and Elizabeth could see the fear in her eyes. "Over a year now, ma'am."

"Is that why you took this posting?"

"No ma'am, but it did make my choice a bit easier."

"The most that I can do is send a letter with your message, confirming that you are officially requesting a divorce and you have informed your highest civil authority," Elizabeth said. "It won't have any legal standing."

A tiny bit of the fear leaked out of Cary's eyes. "That would help, ma'am."

"Captain Walton, will the military take any further action?" Elizabeth asked.

Walton seemed to stiffen even further. "That will be for Major Sheppard to decide."

"So we'll have to see what he says when he returns," Elizabeth said, smiling at Cary in a way that she hoped conveyed her faith in John's good sense. "Lieutenant Cary, this is a difficult situation for all of you and I understand that. Given your long-standing separation from your husband and the circumstances here, I will support you in any way that I can. A stable, loving family is the best start that a child can have, even out here. I'll need some time to compose something appropriate. If you could come to my office later today, I'll let you have a copy of what I'll be sending with your message."

Cary looked almost as though she would collapse and Antho wrapped an arm around her waist in complete defiance of Walton's scandalised glare. They were an odd looking couple, Antho so tall with sun-bleached hair and Cary so tiny and dark and neat. There was no sign of the pregnancy yet and Elizabeth could not help feeling a tiny bit of fear at the thought of a child being born into their dangerous world.

"Thank you, ma'am," Cary said, her eyes watering slightly.

Antho smiled for the first time since they had marched into her office and Elizabeth was surprised by the sweetness in his smile.

"When are you due, lieutenant?" Elizabeth asked.

It was a cliché to say that pregnancy made women glow, but Elizabeth had observed that a lot of clichés had a basis in truth. The soft smile on Cary's face was oddly beautiful.

"In seven months, Doctor Beckett says."

As the little troop filed out, Elizabeth reflected that this had opened up an entirely new set of problems that she had never even considered before, despite her own situation with Teyla.

***

It took Elizabeth a long time to list all the personnel who had died during the Atlantis expedition and review their files, much longer than it should have taken. There were far too many men and women on the list that she had barely met and only a handful that she could write a message for without reference to their service files. In many cases, she had to rely on the comments of their commanding officers to make the messages personal.

She was determined that she would not simply reel off a formulaic message to each family, though. Bad enough that there were so many she could remember only hazily; their families deserved more.

The occasions of their deaths were imprinted on her memory even if the names had become muddled over the months. It was impossible to forget them. There was always the question in her mind, no matter how hard she tried to shut it out, "How many would be dead if someone else had taken the command?"

The families would never be able to know how their loved ones died. Maybe one day the Atlantis project would be de-classified, but it may not be in their lifetimes. There would be so many families who would have to accept the army line and learn not to ask questions.

"He died for his country."

Elizabeth knew that in their place she would never be satisfied with that response. It would be delivered by a solemn soldier who couldn't give them any answers and he would look away awkwardly as the tears came, leaving them with that phrase to repeat over and over until they stopped asking for anything more.

It would be hardest for the civilian families. Military families at least had that community to fall back on, knowing that it had been a death their loved one had accepted when he signed up. How do you explain to the families of civilians that their brother or son would never come home and had died far from home in a fight they had never been trained for? A couple of the files stated that the families had not even known that the deceased was working with the military.

The sense of responsibility would never leave her. Elizabeth sometimes wondered whether a military commander would have been able to cope with the changed situation better. If Colonel Sumner had lived . . .

That was another message that needed to be sent, but Elizabeth knew that it was one she could not write.

A tiny statuette on her desk caught Elizabeth's eye. It was hardly larger than her thumbnail and exquisitely carved, a little monkey-like creature with a wide grin on its face. Teyla had brought it back from a recent trading mission. It was supposed to bring luck, or so the people of Edetem said. The gift brought a smile to Elizabeth's face at the memory of the evening of sweet kisses that had followed.

There was another message that she had to send. She had a feeling that she would be sending it even if she had never met Teyla. It was unfair to ask Simon to keep waiting for her when the odds of her ever returning to Earth were so slim. It was unfair to ask him to continue waiting for her when she had already begun to move on and live a life that he could never be a part of again.

***

Lieutenant Cary tentatively knocked on the door to Elizabeth's office not long after she had finished recording her final message to the families. She still had Simon's message to record, but she needed a break from messages of condolence. She would be officially ending a five-year relationship: she needed to talk to Simon with some distance from the memories of puddle-jumpers bursting into flames above the city.

The lieutenant looked pale, but determined. Elizabeth beckoned her in and offered her a seat.

"Would you like some tea?" she asked.

Cary's hand twitched towards her belly and Elizabeth smiled her understanding.

"It's peppermint," she said. "No caffeine."

A small smile curved Cary's lips and Elizabeth was surprised by how much the expression changed the tiny, dark woman. She looked quite beautiful when she wasn't terrified.

"They're always saying that caffeine isn't good for babies," Cary said softly. "I can't do anything to hurt her."

"A girl?"

"Antho thinks it will be," Cary said, accepting a steaming mug. "He says that he has a good instinct."

"I hope he's right," Elizabeth said, sitting down with her own mug. "How did you meet?"

Cary looked down at her mug. "I was part of the team helping the Athosians adapt their crops to Atlantean soils. He's a farmer."

"I saw from your file that you're trained in botany."

"I always thought that I'd buy a farm, maybe near my family's in Iowa, when I leave the Air Force," Cary said.

"And now?"

Cary shrugged. "Antho is a farmer. If we survive, I'd like to stay with him when my tour is up."

Elizabeth didn't need to say that it might not be possible; she could see in Cary's face that she already knew it. Cary was trying to maintain the fiction that there was hope, that they would find a way to defeat the Wraith the way they always did.

"How long have you and your husband been separated?" Elizabeth asked, knowing that she'd asked before but hoping that this time she might be able to glean a little more about Dana Cary's life and why the mess had ended up in her office.

"A little over a year," Cary said. "I got offered the post at the SGC and Bill was offered a job with a great law firm in New York. We realised that we both wanted our careers more than our marriage."

"You didn't have children?"

Cary eyed her over the rim of her mug, looking as though she couldn't decide whether or not to be offended by the personal questions.

"No, no children," she said after a moment. "We got married so young, we always thought that kids could wait. We wanted our careers first."

The thought hung, unsaid, that they had probably always wanted their careers more than their relationship and they should have waited longer before marrying. Elizabeth could understand her regrets: there was always the thought that, if she hadn't been offered her first diplomatic post in Geneva before she finished her studies, she could easily have married Paul Harris and been in the lieutenant's position a couple of years later.

"Have you recorded your message yet?" Elizabeth asked.

Cary nodded, her mobile, expressive face downcast. "It's the hardest thing I've ever had to do, ma'am."

Elizabeth picked up the letter that she had written, probably the easiest task she'd had all day. A copy would be going with the other data and forwarded to her husband with the video, but Cary needed to see what she had written.

"Good luck," Elizabeth said as she passed the envelope to Cary.

The young woman smiled sadly. "Thank you."

***

John and Teyla were late, much later than any of their mission projections had put them. When Elizabeth finished recording her message to Simon, she retreated to her office and stared at the statuette, willing the Gate to open. They may face immense odds, but she did not want to lose her people - any of her people - in a simple recon mission.

When the Gate finally opened, Elizabeth was half way across her office before the duty technician called for her.

The Puddle-jumper shot through the Gate and halted barely two inches from the control deck. Wraith stunner fire followed it through the Gate, impacting on its shields instead of the technicians at the Gate controls to Elizabeth's relief. The Gate shields flashed into activity a moment later and then the wormhole disengaged. The Puddle-jumper hovered for a minute and Elizabeth could see Teyla and John through the window with a collection of ragged, frightened people behind them before it floated upwards and disappeared through the open port above.

Every instinct told Elizabeth to run for the Jumper bays and find out whether the tight, unhappy look on Teyla's face was an indicator of injury, but she took the time to make sure everything was secure in the command area before going in search of her people. She tracked them down to the infirmary where Carson was rushing around, directing nurses to check over the new arrivals and looking worried. Teyla still looked pale and unhappy, but she was occupied with settling the new people into beds and reassuring them that they were safe. There was no sign of blood or awkward movements and Elizabeth was sure that Carson would not have allowed Teyla to be up and around if there was any chance of injury.

The next few hours were a rush of finding accommodation for Teyla's friends, receiving mission reports and meetings with senior staff. It was late in Atlantis' night - or maybe early in their morning - when Elizabeth, Rodney and the technicians finally sent the data-burst. Elizabeth crossed her arms so that nobody could see her crossed fingers as they dialled Earth.

"Did it get there?" Elizabeth asked when the Gate disengaged so quickly that she barely caught the flash from the surface of the wormhole.

"Of course it got there," Rodney said irritably, looking wide-eyed with lack of sleep and copious coffee.

"And they'll be able to de-code it?"

"Hopefully." Rodney waved a hand. "Yes, yes, they'll be able to de-code it. They'll have my notes and Samantha Carter is almost as smart as I am."

"Thank you, Rodney," Elizabeth said gently. "When did you last sleep?"

A look of blank confusion appeared on Rodney's face.

"Go and get some sleep," Elizabeth said. "The Wraith aren't invading tomorrow and I need you to be able to think when they do get here."

There was a moment when Rodney looked like he might object and then he visibly deflated, suddenly looking more tired than Elizabeth had ever seen him.

Elizabeth's quarters seemed a long way away. She was hit with the urge to ask Rodney to measure the relationship between exhaustion and distance to home, except he had probably already plotted it onto a graph somewhere based on how far the Gate was from his team's position at the end of every mission.

Strong arms enveloped her as Elizabeth slipped through the door to her quarters. She stiffened for a moment before recognising the feel of Teyla around her and relaxing into the hug. Teyla held her close, so tight that Elizabeth's ribs began to protest. She ignored the discomfort, wrapped her arms around Teyla and buried her face in Teyla's hair. Teyla smelled clean and familiar, like mint and fruit and warm summer evenings.

"Hey," she said softly when Teyla finally loosened her hold.

She brushed stray hair away from Teyla's strained, unhappy face and kissed her. There was something angry, almost desperate, in Teyla's kiss, as though she was trying to escape from the misery of the mission into Elizabeth and couldn't. The kiss was hot and painful, teeth clashing and bruising lips and Elizabeth couldn't breathe because Teyla was right _there_ , pressing closer than she ever had before.

It was Elizabeth who broke the kiss, pulling away to suck in air while black spots faded from her vision.

"John told me what happened," she said when she could finally speak.

Teyla's bleak expression hardened for a moment and then she nodded jerkily. "I have never seen a culling like it. They left no-one alive."

"And you had to watch it," Elizabeth continued. "Oh, Teyla."

The Athosian woman's eyes were wet but she was calm. "They will not be forgotten."

"I know they won't," Elizabeth said. "You won't let it happen."

They stood for a long time with their arms wrapped around each other. Elizabeth closed her eyes and let Teyla lean against her, lending her strength as Teyla had so often given hers in the past months. She could feel Teyla's warm breath against her neck, steady and regular despite the emotion. Teyla would not stand and watch when the Wraith came, Elizabeth knew that, and she felt both proud and terrified for her beautiful lover.

"I sent a message to Simon," Elizabeth said eventually, her voice muffled in Teyla's hair. "I told him to move on without me."

Teyla's lips moved against Elizabeth's throat and Elizabeth shuddered. Then they were kissing blindly, fever ignited in moments and Elizabeth was barely aware of anything else as they moved towards the bed shedding shirts and bras as they went. The sex was raw and urgent and Elizabeth shouted incoherently when she climaxed, Teyla a heartbeat behind her.

When Teyla moved to leave, Elizabeth caught her wrist and pulled her back to the bed. For the first time since their first night together, Teyla spend the entire night in Elizabeth's bed. 


End file.
